This Won't Be One of Them
by Tyramir
Summary: Struggling with her feelings and anxiety, Illyana hides behind banter and sass and layers of avoidance. Shan decides to help out a friend in need. Sequel to A Soul in Five Pieces, but it's not required reading. Illyana/Leah


As always when Illyana approached the living room of the mansion, she could hear talk. She couldn't make out the words, not exactly, but the voices were pitched low and quiet, so she knew it was about her. Her ears caught her name more than once, as well as that dreadful nickname Piotr called her, but she didn't have the heart to tell him to stop. As soon as she entered the room, everyone got louder, suddenly speaking about the latest sportsball game. Piotr had the presence to look guilty, and Logan had his classic 'I don't have enough beer for this' expression on. But the rest of them – Kurt, Ororo, Bobby – looked happy. Not apprehensive.

That was new.

People were talking about Illyana behind her back and they weren't afraid. They looked _excited._ This wasn't the normal hushed whispers behind her back, the ones filled with concern or fear. This was _gossip_.

For some reason, that appalled Illyana even more.

"Good morning," Ororo said.

She had that warm, welcoming smile on her face that Illyana normally enjoyed but would never admit to. It was all confidence and openness, with a promise of friendship with no expectations. Today, it set Illyana's heart to a panicked gallop.

She didn't let on. She never did. She grunted something monosyllabically, trying to affect a, 'I have acknowledged your greeting but do not desire to engage' message. Apparently she needed Doug around to translate, because suddenly Ororo swept her up in a hug.

Illyana went still, not sure how to process this. She hated being touched, and hated hugs most of all. But Ororo's hugs were different, in a way, just like her smiles. You could no more fight against her affections or wrath alike than you could her chosen namesake.

Illyana indulged in the hug, allowed it to happen for a bare second before beginning to try to squirm away. Ororo, empathetic as always, knew where the line was and let her go just before it became unbearable.

"So," Bobby said. "We heard—"

"That some people lead private lives," Ororo said, smoothly cutting him off. She wasn't rude about it, but she was firm. Didn't meet his eyes, and was focused on Illyana the entire time.

Illyana had to stop from gulping visibly. They _knew_. And what was this, some kind of intervention? No, they'd never do that. Not to her. No, it was worse. They were sharing in the good news, news they had no right to know.

Rachel. This was her fault somehow.

Piotr stood up from where he sat on the couch, and looked like he was about to come lumbering over and hug her, too. His were good, too, but she'd officially hit her quota for physical affection between Ororo and what happened the day – days? – previous.

She put on her best bored look, and raised a hand. "I'm tired and need coffee."

She dropped a stepping disc in the middle of the floor and teleported out before anyone could get closer.

The mansion gave way, there was a brief flicker of in-between. She teleported a few times just for good measure. Sometimes, 'for her own good', people liked to try to spy on her with Cerebra, so Illyana always did her best to try to confuse the signal. She doubted it worked, but it probably made things a little more difficult for whoever tried to track her whereabouts.

She teleported randomly, not really setting an end destination in mind. She just wanted to elsewhere, to be away from having any emotional conversations or talks of self-discovery. They were always so tedious and intrusive, and people never knew when to just appreciate silence.

So it came as kind of surprise when she ended up sitting across Shan who was in the middle of breakfast.

They were in a diner, fairly empty, a plate of pancakes with a side of bacon in front of Shan, who'd been hacking them apart and eating them with relish before Illyana appeared in the booth seat directly across from her. She paused, a fork halfway to her mouth, her eyes wide in surprise.

"No, no," Illyana said. "Don't stop on my account. We wouldn't want people to think you're conscious of any body issues."

Shan scowled, but very deliberately finished her bite. "What are you doing here, Commie?"

"No idea, Frenchie. Went random 'porting, ended up here. Where is here?"

"Can't you just cast a spell and figure that out, witch?"

"Sure could, tubby, but I'm concentrating on other things right now."

Namely, a glamour to keep prying eyes off her. It wasn't perfect. A lot of her tutelage had been under Dr. Strange, and while he was Master of the Mystic Arts and Sorcerer Supreme and the Keeper of Ridiculous Facial Hair and Founding Member of Its Brotherhood, he liked to be seen. Revelled in it, even. He liked people pointing and staring at him and his magnificent cape. So, glamour magic was very low on Strange's list of priorities.

So the little Illyana knew on the subject was primarily in keeping people from avoiding looking at her, to just pretend like she wasn't there. Anyone with combat or magic training and decent situational awareness could get around it if they tried. But it was good enough for random civilians who didn't know to look for her. People would've even notice Shan was sitting at a table, apparently talking to herself. They'd see her, of course. But they wouldn't register that she was speaking, or if they did, their attention would slide off that fact. It was subtle stuff. Not powerful, but subtle. And required more concentration than Illyana liked.

"We're in San Fran, demonspawn," Shan said, perhaps a little too cheerfully. "Home of my people."

"Your people? I didn't know that San Francisco was the home of robo-people."

"You know what I mean, pinko scum."

"You keep calling me a Communist, but last I checked, Vietnam was still red, and Russia…" Illyana smiled back. Hers wasn't so much winsome as devilish. It wasn't hard for someone who was a little bit demonic. "I thought Asians were supposed to be good at history."

"We are. And I notice you keep trying for fat jokes. Must be hard, being so blonde." Shan's smile was more winsome than evil, and to follow it up, she ate a slice of bacon.

"You know, for someone named 'Karma', you'd think you'd be vegetarian."

"Alas. Bacon is just so good. So, why are you bothering me?"

"Aha! I win this round. No insult demands a forfeit."

Shan took one last strip of bacon off her plate, and then pushed the remains to Illyana. "You only win because I wasn't prepared for you. I'll get you next time."

Illyana picked up Shan's spoon, which hadn't been used, and began to work at the food with it. She was reasonably sure Shan's fork wouldn't give her cooties, but sharing cutlery was about the same as touching, in her mind. Way too invasive and close.

"So," Shan continued. "Why are you here?"

Illyana made a grunt, which translated into, "Silence, peasant. Eating."

Apparently Shan wasn't fluent in grunts, because she got that introspective look on her face. "You're running from something."

"Am not," Illyana said, her mouth still full.

"No, you're deflecting. I know the Illyana Stages of Deflection."

"Whu?"

"You have a pattern. Grumpy silence, evasion, dark humour, more intense silence, sullen silence, and even darker humour, followed by murder-rage-nearly-kill-the-world-before-letting-your-friends-in. We're on stage two, getting close to stage three. I hope."

The spoon clattered to the plate, and Illyana briefly considered teleporting away just to spite Shan. That'd mess up her stupid categories.

"I'll buy you a milkshake," Shan said. "And you won't even need to tell me anything. You could just sit there and enjoy it and imagine exiling me in Limbo."

Illyana crossed her arms and looked away, maybe a little guiltily. That might've been her next thought.

"Fine," she said.

Shan called the waitress over and ordered both a strawberry and a chocolate milkshake. The waitress was annoyingly bubbly, almost nauseatingly so. Shan gave her a deliberate once-over as she left.

Illyana's scowl deepened.

"What?" Shan said. "I came here this morning with two objectives in mind. Breakfast, and Mary's phone number. You are not blue boxing me on this one."

Illyana snorted, and had difficulty keeping her stern expression up. When Mary-the-Waitress returned with both milkshakes, Illyana deliberately pulled both to her side of the table and gave Shan a challenging look. Shan had the audacity of smiling as if that had been her plan all along somehow.

Illyana lined up both straws together and began to sip from both at once, determined to enjoy this small victory, and not let Shan ruin it in any way at all. She just wanted to be left alone, really. Just sit there and enjoy her milkshakes. Didn't want to talk about her issues at all.

Nope.

"Fine!" Illyana said. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Shan said innocently.

"You know. That." She waved towards Mary-the-Waitress, who was very deliberately staring at Shan despite being asked for attention from a neckbeard in a fedora.

Illyana expected some barb, or maybe some line of inquisition. Instead, Shan just shrugged.

"I have enough barriers in my way as it is. Mutant. Amputee. Orphan. Immigrant. You can only have so many hang ups. I decided a long while ago that liking women wouldn't be among mine."

"And that's it? You just woke up one morning, said, 'I have enough issues, and this isn't going to be one of them'?"

"No. It wasn't easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. But it's worth the effort."

She didn't say anything else. Didn't dig, didn't pry. Illyana just sat there and sipped at her milkshakes while Shan and Mary-the-Waitress eye-banged each other while the neckbeard tried desperately to get some service.

If anything, it made Illyana even more uncomfortable than talking would have. She squirmed slightly in her seat, but Shan took no notice.

"You know," Illyana finally said. "Mary over there kind of looks like Kitty."

Shan sat up a little straighter, a heated blush coming over her face. "I hadn't noticed."

"I swear, Kitty has to spray herself down with some kind of pheromone every morning. She's like a giant lesbian magnet."

"And you'd know nothing about that?" Shan asked archly.

It was Illyana's turn to blush, but she put on her best annoyed expression, the one that was supposed to communicate that she was ready and willing to call her Soulsword to her side and start taking limbs with it. Apparently Shan was immune to that look. Probably inoculated to threats of dismemberment after already losing a limb.

But somehow, Shan knew just the thing to say anyway. She said nothing. She wasn't even insufferably smug about it. Or disgustingly over-supportive. She was the one thing that Illyana needed, and that was quiet.

"There's a girl I like," Illyana blurted. "A woman, I mean. I like her. _Like_ like her."

Shan nodded.

"It's not Kitty," Illyana said defensively. "Not this time, anyway. I don't… I don't normally feel… I don't like people. Not in _that_ way. I always thought Kitty would be the exception, but then… And everyone knows somehow. Back at the mansion. They were talking about me this morning, but not in that, 'Oh no, Illyana's going to kill us all' way. In that, 'Oh, she's happy, that's great' way, and that… why can't people just mind their own business?"

"In the X-Mansion? Are you kidding me? They must be jumping for joy that you're suddenly sexually available. If there's one thing the X-Men are good at, it's sleeping with one another, and I'm sure it's irked a few people that you never joined in on those games."

Shan was kidding, she knew, but the comment still annoyed her. Maybe even made her panic a little. She didn't want to be with other people, she wanted…

"Leah," Illyana said. "Her name's Leah."

"Is she new? I don't think I've ever met a 'Leah' at the mansion."

"She's… not at the mansion."

Part of her wanted to elaborate, to explain the whole sordid details. Go into the story. But part of Illyana's mind dug its heels in and decided that was enough sharing.

"You get out?" Shan asked. "Good for you. We always worried that it was just nothing but the team and Limbo with you."

"Don't… can people not worry about me for a change? Or at least, just go back to the 'Oh no, she's going to kill us all' stage of worrying? I prefer that level of it."

"Can't. New Mutants club's gotta stick together. It's our job to worry about one another."

"I worry about you, too. It's why I came to save you from this delicious, yet fattening, milkshake."

"There's the evil witch we all know and love."

"Hey. Just because I like _a_ girl – okay, two girls – doesn't mean we're—"

Shan burst out laughing. "No. God no. You're my friend, but not if you were the last woman on Earth, Rasputin."

"So, you're not even, you know, a little bit surprised that I…"

"Nope. I have a pretty finely tuned gaydar. And it's always pinged demisexual lesbian on you."

"Demi… What?"

"I'll give you some reading materials, if you're interested. They help."

"Ugh. I forgot to make a bookworm joke earlier."

"It basically means you don't have sexual attraction to people without having some kind of feelings for them first. And, the lesbian part means you like girls."

"I knew that." Illyana gave her a half-hearted swat to the arm. "You actually … pinged that off me? So many people thought I was into Doug for a while."

"Yeah, and a lot of people think Deadpool's completely hetero, too, despite him actually talking about all his man-crushes all the time."

"To be honest, I tend to tune him out when I'm not just teleporting him into a volcano."

"God, I wish I had your powers some days. You know what it's like being in someone else's head?"

They chatted for a bit more, mostly about nothing. Illyana hated clichés about great weights being lifted off of chests and/or shoulders, but she felt it. It wasn't as big as the one after the whole Old Gods victory. In comparison, it was so small, she almost didn't notice it.

But she did. She breathed a little easier, and then somehow, that made the anxiety come right back.

"I know what I have to do," Illyana said.

"Good," Shan said. "Go do it."

"You're a better friend than I am, Shan."

"No, I'm not. I'm trying to get rid of you so I can ask a girl out. Now shoo."

"I'm taking these," Illyana said, clutching the remains of the two milkshakes in her hands. "For your own safety."

"Yeah, yeah. You think you're getting the last joke in, but I know why you really teleported here, Ms. I Subconsciously Wanted Help from an Expert and Was Too Proud to Ask."

In response, Illyana sipped noisily at both straws before dropping a stepping disc out. The diner vanished from around her, and she ended up in Central Park. Leah liked to come here to read, and while she pretended to be somewhat Machiavellian and unpredictable, she had a pretty tight schedule. Namely, if there was sunlight out and there was nothing pressing on the horizon, she was outside and reading.

The sunlight was distressingly bright, and she feared for the state of her milkshakes, until she found Leah sitting at the base of a tree, reading a book. Illyana didn't say anything as she plopped down beside her, just held out a half-filled chocolate milkshake to Leah, who took it without a word, as if she'd expected it all along.

They sat together in silence, and Illyana couldn't keep her eyes off Leah the entire time. If Illyana was the type, she'd write poetry about this woman. If she were the type, she'd sing her songs. If she were the type, she'd make all the grandest gestures in her arsenal, and still find none of them to be enough.

Instead, they were quiet, and respectful of their distance from one another, and it was perfect.

After an hour, Leah snapped her book closed, and said, "So, what's on the agenda for today?"

"I was thinking of coming out."

"We're already outside."

"No, I mean… telling everyone. About us. Showing you off to my…" she almost said 'teammates,' "… friends."

"Are you sure you're ready for that?"

Illyana shrugged. "I think… someone said something to me earlier today, and it kind of rings true for me, too. I have a lot of my own problems and hang-ups. I'm a mutant, an immigrant, a soulless monster, a demon. But I've decided that you're not going to be one of them. You're worth enduring all the nauseating drama for."

Leah's face lit up in a beautiful smile. "That might just be the nicest thing you've said to me."

She leaned in and gave Illyana a quick kiss on the lips. It was chaste, but her kisses always started off that way. Always tentative, as if asking for permission first.

"You weren't listening," Illyana said. "You're not going to be one of my hang-ups."

And then she kissed Leah with as much fierce passion as she could manage, all that affection held back because she'd felt undeserving of love, or because she'd feared being happy. No more. Not with Leah. She was going to make a choice, just like Shan said.

They teleported to the mansion after that, Leah taking extra care not to leave her book behind, lest it get lost.

"That only happened one time," Illyana said as they appeared in the mansion's halls in a flash of light.

"Once was enough."

There was noise in the common room. More talking. Didn't these people ever do anything productive with their days? But as she heard it, Illyana immediately began to fuss over Leah's dress, making sure there wasn't any dirt or grass on it from sitting on the ground. Even as she began to brush at imaginary green stains on the green fabric, Leah arched an eyebrow at her.

"Getting a little handsy today?" she asked. "Very well. Did you want to display me before your friends by taking me in an appropriate fashion?"

Illyana blushed – when had _that_ started becoming a regular occurrence? – and forced her hands to her sides, and then realized she felt awkward that way, and instead took one of Leah's hands in her own. Leah was bemused with the entire spectacle, and instead pulled herself loose and then intertwined her own arm with Illyana's.

"Lead the way," Leah said.

Illyana had to muster her courage, something she hadn't expected to have to do for such a small act. She could charge at mutant-killing robots, and duel with demons without hesitation, but going into the common room with her girlfriend – ugh, labels – nearly paralyzed her with fear.

"It's okay," Leah said. "We don't have to do this."

"No. You're not going to be one of my hang-ups."

She repeated it in her head, over and over. Tried to summon up the sheer strength that Shan exuded, and took a step forward. Her feet felt awkward and dumb, like a drunken duck's, but Leah was all confidence and grace, and somehow managed to transfer some small part of that over through her grasp. When they crossed the threshold into the common room, Illyana felt more like the conquering queen of Limbo, than the nervous wreck she felt like.

It wasn't just Ororo, Logan, Bobby, Kurt and Piotr this time. At some point, Rachel had joined them. And not just her. Kitty, as well. They were all arranged across the various furniture, watching some bad Sci Fi movie, while Kitty threw popcorn at the screen and jeered at scientific inaccuracies.

"Everyone," Illyana said as she came in. "I wanted to introduce you to… to my girlfriend, Leah."

Logan acted about the way Illyana expected him to. He grunted, took another drink of his beer, and muttered, "About time."

Piotr at first looked confused, but then was up on his feet, and suddenly there was hugging, too much hugging, and he had his arms around both her and Leah at the same time, pressed against his chest. Illyana feared suffocation, and contemplated teleporting him a little to the left of her favourite spot to send people that annoyed her, before he finally released them and blessed oxygen returned once more.

Ororo and Kurt were next, although Kurt was far more polite about the whole business. While he was affectionate, he elected only to shake Leah's hand, bowing over it and kissing the back of it as he introduced himself. Ororo, as always, was warm and welcoming. She asked gentle, probing questions, and complimented Leah on how lovely her dress was.

Bobby sat in a sullen funk on the couch, muttering just loudly enough about how he'd come out 'before it was cool,' and Rachel threw some popcorn at him.

And then there was Kitty, standing before them, and it was like nothing else in the world existed except the three of them. Illyana clutched to Leah's arm all the tighter and leaned into her.

"I'm happy for you," Kitty said, and somehow, those words were exactly the ones Illyana needed to hear.

"And I'm happy for you," Illyana said jokingly, giving Rachel a knowing look.

Kitty smiled. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." She turned to Leah. "Okay, we have this out of the way. Want to go on a double date tonight?"

"With… whom?" Leah said, giving Kitty a suspicious look.

"Oh, no." No, _that_ was a disastrous idea. At least, it was for now. Maybe later, when their relationship wasn't still new. "I was thinking we could wingwoman for a friend. Help her with a certain waitress itch she's been having."

"And does this friend have anything to do with your new attitude today?"

Illyana kissed Leah very thoroughly, not caring who saw. "Everything."

"Very well. I suppose we could go out. Is there anything I must do, any clothes I must wear?"

"No. You're already way prettier than Shan's date."

"Oh? And this is meant to be a competition?"

"No. Well, yes. It isn't. But if it is, I want to win, and for once, this isn't a contest where I have to cheat to get ahead."

Bobby made some kind of snorting laughter. Illyana had forgotten they were still in earshot. Piotr practically lit up the room he was blushing so hard. Kitty and Ororo began to play referee, and even though it was Illyana and Leah who arrived last, the two ushered the other X-Men out of the room, allowing for some much needed privacy.

"So," Leah said. "Our plan is to completely crush your friend?"

"No. Our plan is to have a good time. Enjoy one another's… company. And if we happen to completely show up Shan in the process, well, that's just icing."

"Icing?"

"Oh, yeah, that reminds me, if you see Shan getting ready to eat any sweets, you have to take them from her."

"Something tells me this Shan is a much better friend than you are."

"Oh, is she ever."


End file.
